[.ca] The Marketplace (ISBN 0964596040)

Not quite my view of BDSM:
This is the story of four slaves - Brian, Claudia, Sharon and Robert - who all have an inherent need to be "owned" in the fullest sense of the word. We follow their journey as they are trained in a crash course by Alex, Grendel and Chris. Basically, The Marketplace is a secret society catering to those who wish to own well-trained slaves and those who wish to be sold as slaves. When we're talking about a slave in this context, we're talking about one with no limits. I'm ambivalent about this book for a number of reasons. Firstly, if this was reality, the training provided in this book would be utilised by owners who can't be bothered training their own slaves and who want to buy one off the shelf. To me, that takes the dominant's authority away from them - isn't half the pleasure of owning a slave knowing that you've trained them yourself? Secondly, there is a huge amount of sex in this book. I'm no prude and I don't have a problem with sex, but BDSM is not all about sex. If you want a lot of sex scenes mixed in with punishment, then you'll love this. But to me, it misrepresents what real-life BDSM is about and enforces the "kinky sex" stereotype that a lot of people seem to have about BDSM. Thirdly, the grammatical and typographical errors throughout are horrendous. I don't know what device was used to type The Marketplace, but repeatedly mis-spelling "circumstance" as "circomestance" could easily have been corrected in most modern word processors. There are other oft-repeated and very annoying grammatical errors, which drove me to distraction. I admit that I'm fairly picky about things like this and I can live with a few errors, but this book is riddled with them. However, I found this an interesting read overall. It is more than just a bunch of sex and BDSM scenes and it has a storyline.

a series you can sink your teeth into ;):
Laura has amazingly created a rich and wonderful world of people that I could get addicted to. The character development is amazing , and I find myself reading the next book hoping to find out more. I would definitly recommend this book for those that look for a more modern approach to the 'lifestyle' ...just remember ..this isn't a how to ...(try screw the roses send me the thorns .. for that) ...one again ..thanks Laura. .I'm looking forward to the next book.

Veiled allusions to real life celebs...:
Claudia seemed refer to a younger Britney Spears, & Robert to Cedric the Entertainer. Fun book!

This book could use a little help:
The story line in this book is of 4 very different in personality, want to be slaves. I guess the basics of this book are good, if you wanted to just real it as a thrill, but I don't feel it would be something the BDSM community at large would hold as standard. I did like the idea of the slaves in training not exactly knowing why a particular thing was taking place, and only finding out later that it had actually trained them in a particular way. That a particualr part of their training really ended up meaning something even if they couldn't see what it was to begin with. What I didn't like about the book, was the cold feeling it leaves behind. This is definately not a loving domination/submission story. There are a lot of scenes that take place in this book that kind of made me feel empty, like there never being any kind of after care or hardly any compassion. One of the other reviews I read mentioned the fact that the biggest part or a master slave relationship is in the training and if such a place as this exsisted then what would be the point. With this I agree. So if you were just reading it out of pure fantasy then you might like it, but if your looking for something with a bit more compassion and reality this book probably isn't for you. Oh one other thing, I don't know who proof-read this book before it went to print, but I found the typos in the book really annoying, there are a lot of them and when you read a sentence with one, spending a few extra minutes trying to figure out what they were supposed to be saying makes the book that much more annyoing.

Marketplace review:
This was the worst in the books from this author. If you like descriptive scenes, this is not for you. Pretty well written but the story has no interest and there does not seem to be any point in it. Skip this one.